Sunday, October 19, 2014

Things for WiiU : Hyrule Warriors and Bayonetta 2

Maybe it's because I've been listening to too many Nerdist podcasts with Chris Hardwick, or maybe it's the drummer in my band who works on advertising who did this to me, but I have this concept lodged in my head that I can't get out.

If you're going to pitch a new game idea/movie idea/story idea to someone else, it has to be conveyed in terms of two things that the person you're pitching to is already familiar with.
For example, if Sam Raimi were pitching Army of Darkness to someone trying to get funding after he just did Evil Dead 2, he could say that it's Evil Dead 2 meets A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Sometimes you can use more basic references, like you could say that Blade Runner is a murder mystery but with robots. (Yes I know they're called replicants, but you shouldn't use a word you're just going to have to turn around and explain in a pitch.) So if I were to explain the new WiiU game Hyrule Warriors to you, it could be framed in the same way - it's The Legend of Zelda meets Dynasty Warriors.

Of course, one of the problems with that is that not everybody has played Dynasty Warriors, and compared to the long-running success of the Legend of Zelda games, it's practically a niche title. The other problem with that is that the Dynasty Warriors games have all been on Playstation 2 and 3 (and now 4). The only games that have come out for a Nintendo system that are even close to the gameplay of Dynasty Warriors are Mystic Heroes which came out for Gamecube in 2002 and Sengoku Basara which came out for Wii in 2010 (which was played in our house almost continuously for a stretch of a year or more).

The word used to denote this style of game is Musou, because Koei/Tecmo made most of these games and so those games are referred to as Musou games or Warriors games. Unless you work for CAPCOM, it's probably acceptable to say that "Sengoku Basara is a Musou-style game series made by CAPCOM". These games have a variety of characters to choose from, and a number of medium-size playfields broken into smaller areas. The characters typically have swords or pikes or other melee weapons, but some characters also have more fantastic attacks that may seem like guns or magic or something else that isn't totally realistic. Most of these games heavily rely on fantasy elements to keep the gameplay moving along. The characters all seem to have attacks that are widely varied from character to character so each character may require a different approach. They are designed to simulate a battle scenario that includes a number of base camps for your character to conquer. As you play through a level, the game will put messages on-screen to tell you what the victory conditions are, and sometimes they change during the course of a battle. Your character usually has to fight thousands of enemies throughout the course of a battle, most of which are rather minor, some base commanders that are a little more substantial, and some of which are powerful "boss" characters that have strength more on par with yours.

With Hyrule Warriors, there are both existing characters to choose from and some new characters created specifically for the game. Our hero Link, the princess Zelda and her alter ego Sheik, the fierce warrior Impa, the evil Ganondorf, Princess Ruta of the Zora Kingdom, and the Goron leader Darunia, are all available as playable characters from the Zelda series. Even the newer sidekicks like Midna and Fi are playable. Most strangely, Agitha is a playable character, but here insect-based attacks are quite the force to be reckoned with. Rounding out the first wave of playable Zelda universe characters are the bad guys Girahim from Skyward Sword and Zant from Twilight Princess. Lana is a cutesy magic-user made specifically for the game who can use a big spell book or a staff from the Deku tree. Her rival the evil sorceress Cia will be a playable character if you get some of the DLC for this game.

Here's a rather long clip from the Treehouse that shows a lot of footage from the game.

My older son has completed the main story already and has most of the characters unlocked that are currently available. He's still having a difficult time working his way through the Adventure Mode, since some of the specific missions require beating the boss enemies more quickly than we are used to. So, that means Zant and Girahim are still waiting to be unlocked. (I'm still working on the story mode but I wonder why I don't get to play it as often...) The game has done a fantastic job of recreating several areas directly from Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, and the Ocarina of Time. Some of the other areas are a little less recognizable to me, but maybe I should have played more Majora's Mask. It plays exactly as I would expect, and the game seems very responsive even when there are scores of enemies on the screen. The only complaint I could possibly have on the visuals is that when the game is played 2-player, one person plays on the GamePad screen and the second player plays on the TV, and the person that plays on the GamePad screen gets a little less visual fidelity than normal. Some of the effect passes are skipped over when rendering the small screen. It does seem like genius to not have the splitscreen, since my biggest problem with two-player Sengoku Basara was that the split screen made it difficult to see what you were supposed to be doing a lot of the time.

Some hardcore Zelda fans are bound to be disappointed by this game because it's not a real Zelda game to them, but if you're a fan of beat-em ups or the Warriors games and also like the Zelda characters, there is so much fan service and depth to the game that you could play the game for weeks and still have characters to level up, Golden Skulltulas to find, and challenges to master. If that's not quite enough, for another $20 you can get all of the DLC that is going to be put out over the next several months.

In other news, Platinum Games' stylish action title Bayonetta 2 is finally coming out for WiiU this month. Before the WiiU was even released, Platinum had announced that Bayonetta 2 was going to be a WiiU exclusive because of Nintento's help in making the game happen. The first Bayonetta game told the story of a woman that wakes up from a lake not knowing exactly who she is but having to figure out why she is a witch, why there are creepy monsters with halos trying to kill her, why there is a doofus reporter and a small girl chasing after her, and how to dance around firing guns on her feet and using her hair as a weapon. The pitch for Bayonetta 2 should be "Everything that you already did in Bayonetta 1, but bigger!" For WiiU owners that didn't play the original Bayonetta, a port of the first game is included on a separate disc, with the addition of Samus, Princess Peach, and Link costumes with unique weapons for Bayonetta to unlock and use.

There is a demo out for Bayonetta 2, which we have played already. You get a brief tutorial on the controls, which are identical to the first game with the exception of one button. In the demo, you start out fighting three large centaur-like enemies at a time while on the back of a fighter jet flying through skyscrapers while another larger enemy flies around. At some point, you start attacking the larger enemy from the plane, and then jump down on the back of a moving train to continue the battle. The third part involves battling a large monster at the spire of a tall building, King-Kong style. Here's a look from GamersPrey HD:

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I did pretty horrible at the game, I think a got a third or fourth-tier ranking (either Silver or Stone) but I was so busy looking at everything that I didn't care about my bad score. This looks pretty great, has more going on visually than the original did, runs much more smoothly, and I'm really looking forward to playing this in a week or two assuming everybody else isn't still hogging the machine. For those of you that played this on PS3 and you're not sure how you feel about the GamePad controller for an action game, the solution would be dropping another $50 on the WiiU Pro Controller. Now there is another control option that involved the touchscreen, but I didn't check to see what that was yet. If it turns out to be significant, I will post about it separately.

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About Me

I'm a middle aged guy with a wife, kids, and pets. I don't get far from my Rubik's cube, and if you ask me about it I will show you. I try to pay attention to customer service and understand products, with mixed success. I like Zelda, Pikmin, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Sengoku Basara, Street Fighter, and playing music.